Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

You Want to Buy What?

Louisville, Kentucky's WAVE 3 News notes that members of the city's homeless and underprivileged populations are being approached by people in unmarked vans offering money for DNA samples.

Participants are reportedly providing cheek swabs in exchange for $20. But the purpose of the DNA collection remains difficult to discern for at least some of the individuals who have participated, according to WAVE 3 News. Some participants were told that their samples would be used to screen for cancer.

The "offer is only available to Passport [Health] customers," Phylicia Ashley writes, though a Passport representative told Ashley that the company is "not related to the group" and that "Passport Health warned customers about engaging with them." 

"WAVE 3 News is still working to find out exactly why the group is paying people for their DNA," Ashley concludes.

The Scan

Genetic Ancestry of South America's Indigenous Mapuche Traced

Researchers in Current Biology analyzed genome-wide data from more than five dozen Mapuche individuals to better understand their genetic history.

Study Finds Variants Linked to Diverticular Disease, Presents Polygenic Score

A new study in Cell Genomics reports on more than 150 genetic variants associated with risk of diverticular disease.

Mild, Severe Psoriasis Marked by Different Molecular Features, Spatial Transcriptomic Analysis Finds

A spatial transcriptomics paper in Science Immunology finds differences in cell and signaling pathway activity between mild and severe psoriasis.

ChatGPT Does As Well As Humans Answering Genetics Questions, Study Finds

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics had ChatGPT answer genetics-related questions, finding it was about 68 percent accurate, but sometimes gave different answers to the same question.